Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has maintained close ties with the Taliban despite the Taliban’s assurances to the United States to sever ties with the group, a senior UN official said.
“High-level figures remain in Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of armed operatives,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, coordinator of the United Nations monitoring team for Daesh, al-Qaida and the Taliban, said on Friday during a cited webinar. by Tolo News.
Tolo News further reported that the Taliban “regularly consulted” with al-Qaeda during peace negotiations with the United States. “[Al-Qaeda leader] Ayman al-Zawahiri continues to be close to the Taliban, ”he said. “The Taliban regularly consulted with al-Qaeda during negotiations with the United States and offered informal assurances that would honor their historical ties to al-Qaeda.”
However, the Taliban rejected the claims, saying that “certain intelligence groups” are trying to disturb the peace in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the US Special Representative for the Reconciliation of Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in a conversation with the US Institute of Peace, said that Iran wants “the US to remain engaged in the war of Afghanistan and does not support the peace process in Afghanistan, “as reported Tolo News
“I think it is difficult to talk about Iran because there is not one Iran, there are two Iranians. There is an Iranian Foreign Ministry that says positive things and expresses ideas or makes statements that could be construed as supporting a peace process, but there is another Iran that would like to keep the United States embroiled in a war that it would like not to. could win. Khalilzad said, quoted by Tolo News.
Although the US Special Representative called Pakistan’s efforts in the Afghan peace process “positive”, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar warned that terrorism in Pakistan is publicly recognized by his own government.
“Pakistan’s terrorism continues and Pakistan’s terrorism continues to be publicly recognized by your government as a policy they are justifying. (This) makes it very difficult to maintain normal relationships with them, ”Jaishankar said at an online event organized by the Asia Society.
He added: “They have blocked connectivity between India and Afghanistan … I think that until we address that problem, this challenge of how to have a normal relationship with this unique neighbor, is a very worrying issue for our foreign policy. “
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